


don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this

by Mikkeneko



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dragon Age Quest: Broken Circle, F/M, Illusions, Interspecies Romance, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 08:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16155455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: It's a love story, baby, just say yes.





	don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this

**Author's Note:**

> A Tumblr-style prompt I wrote years ago about the Desire Demon and the Templar from the 'Broken Circle' questline, and wondering what might have happened to them if you spared them.

She takes him off to a remote mountain cottage, with breathtaking scenery and a nice cosy hearth laid in the fireplace, a garden full of fruits and flowers, and no one left to hurt them. And they're happy there, they are. She makes sure of it.

It's years later he looks at her and says: “Darling, can you believe our son will be turning fourteen this spring? He’ll be a man soon.”

“Mm, has it really been so long?” she sighs, wrapping her arms around him and leaning into his chest. “It feels like only yesterday.”

“Darling, can you believe our daughter will be ten years old in the autumn? That means we’ve been together for, what, fifteen years?”

“Something like that,” she agrees, since time is still a hazy concept to her.

And he’s quiet for a moment, then turns to face her with a smile and says:

“Darling, it’s been fifteen years; don’t you think you can be rid of the illusions now?”

And she wilts and shrinks away from his eyes, and all the illusions fall away, and the lovely golden locked woman is replaced with a demon of desire: cat eyes, purple skin, a nervously lashing tail. She tenses and bares her teeth in a hiss, waiting for him to strike.

But instead he just smiles at her, reaches her out to take her in his arms. “Darling, it’s all right,” he said. “I love you. I don’t need lies and illusions to make that so.”

And she quails, and says, “But the others in the Fade – the elder ones – they always said that you must never show your true face to the mortals, or else they will kill you.”

“That’s true,” he agrees. “And the Chantry schoolmasters always said that you must never give in to a demon’s beguilement, or else they will eat your heart and drain you dry, leaving only a husk behind. Are you going to eat my heart, Darling?”

“No, never,” she protests, grasping his hands in her own. “I only ever wanted to make you happy.”

“I know,” he said. “I was an orphan from an early age, you know – I never knew my parents. I went from a cold and joyless orphanage to a cold and joyless barracks, always a mark on a ledger or a name in a roster, and in all my life, no one ever cared about what would make me _happy_. No one until you.”

She’s quiet for a moment, and then she whispers, “Our children aren’t real, you know.”

“I know,” he says.

“I know you wanted children,” she says, and it hurts her so much to think that there is something that he desires, that she cannot give to him. 

“If I learned anything from the orphanage,” he tells her, “It’s not flesh that makes a family. It’s love. There are orphans like me in the world who want a home, who want a family. Who want a father and mother of their own. I think you would find, darling, that a child’s desires are very simple, and very easy to fill.”

And she smiles at him, and embraces him, and kisses him, because it’s what he wants, and it’s what she wants as well.

* * *

years later, with their children in truth grown and gone, in the little cottage with the breathtaking view, when frost lies heavily on the garden and all the roaring of the fireplace cannot keep the cold at bay, they lie in their bed together. the frost is in his hair now, too; it’s in his chest, in his lungs. She knew that mortals aged quickly, but never this quickly; but she stayed with him, and till the very end he feels no pain because of her.

“All I ever meant,” she murmurs against his skin, lying curled up against his side, “was to be what you wanted.”

 _I know_ , he would say, if he had the strength to form the words. She hears, anyway.

“And all you ever wanted,” she whispers, breathing in his last breath, “was love.”

He breathes out, and he is gone; slipped into a deeper dream than any Fade spirit will ever reach.

She returns to the Fade then; she wanted a mortal life, and she has had it, and she is ready to go home. She walks out of the cottage and in her footsteps, flowers grow; she walks into the realm of dreamers, and every mortal who passes in her wake dreams of love.

 

* * *

 

 

~end.


End file.
